American Experience 37x6 - Kissinger: Part One – TheNecessity of Power

Kissinger begins with the devastating childhood experiencesthat helped forge Henry Kissinger's political philosophy. InAugust 1938, after Hitler's government had embarked on acampaign to destroy Germany's Jews, Kissinger's family fled tothe United States. Their escape came two monthsbefore Kristallnacht and the outbreak of violence that wouldculminate in the murder of six million Jews (and millions ofothers), including 13 members of Kissinger's extended family,implanting in Kissinger the durable conviction that power wasthe prerequisite for liberty.  As a refugee in New York City,Kissinger worked his way up from a job at a shaving brushfactory to a stint as an intelligence officer in the U.S. Armyferreting out Nazis in post-war Germany. He returned to earn anadvanced degree and professorship at Harvard in government,marking the start of a dazzling career. He became an expert onnuclear weapons policy, eventually securing a position asNational Security Advisor for President Richard Nixon at theheight of the Cold War. He was an unlikely pick — an awkwardacademic with a thick accent who hired a staff of ideologicallydiverse young men, including film interviewees Anthony Lake,Winston Lord, Roger Morris, and Morton Halperin. Bedeviledby how to end the increasingly unpopular war in Vietnam, theNixon administration turned to increasingly audaciousinterventions to force Hanoi to the bargaining table, firstsecretly bombing, then invading neighboring Cambodia. Punditsdebated whether these escalations were brilliant strokes oftactical genius or unconstitutional attacks on a neutralnation. Several Kissinger staffers resigned, and protestserupted across America. Public morale reached a bloody nadir onMay 4, 1970, with the shooting of antiwar demonstrators atKent State.